This post about the top pick in the NBA Draft, incredibly, contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
For an 18 year old, Zion Williamson doesn’t outwardly do much wrong. Actually, for anybody at any age you can say that of the media savvy, intelligent, charming number one pick in the NBA Draft. Sure he’s being sued for $100 million by a sports marketing firm, but, that shit happens, apparently.
But, what really got some people in a tizzy was something the said during his introductory press conference in New Orleans when asked a question about his draft night message to the city when he said simply, “Let’s Dance.”
He wasn’t referencing the 1983 David Bowie song:
His “funny story about that” involves the Mad Titan, Thanos, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Zion says his favorite Avengers character is Thanos. ? pic.twitter.com/iA4eqDxmiC
— NBA TV (@NBATV) June 21, 2019
“Me and a group of friends, we went to see Avengers: Endgame, and if you know me, Thanos is my favorite character. So Captain America’s shield’s broken. I’m like, ‘We’re about to win. For once, the movie’s going to be realistic, and the bad guy wins sometimes.’ Because he’s the strongest.
“So my friend Axel, he’s like, ‘Hold on, hold on.’ And all of a sudden, all these superheroes who disappeared five years ago just start appearing, and I’m like, ‘Oh, might lose.’ And he looks at me and goes, ‘Let’s dance.’”
Ah, 18 year olds, out there rooting for a genocidal maniac to succeed in his plan to rid the universe of half its population and then stop the remaining superheroes from being able to somehow reverse what he did! What a great guy, Thanos is!
But you know, there are a couple of things about this.
a) It’s a movie and you can root for whoever you want.
b) Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame screen writers Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFeely and directors Anthony and Joel Russo have never pretended that they didn’t position Thanos as the “hero” of Infinity War. Thanos gets the hero’s journey in that movie, and is by far the main character in it. Sure, the movie starts with him strangling Thor, beating up Hulk and killing Loki, and along the way does a lot of other really horrible things like sacrifice Gamora, his adopted daughter, for the Soul Stone, torture people, oh and yes, there’s the part where he snaps his fingers and kills half of everything, everywhere. But Josh Brolin is terrific in a role that otherwise could have been thankless, playing a fully CGI, nine-foot-tall purple dude from the planet Titan, and the animation is so great that you forget Thanos isn’t “real.”
In Infinity War he’s asked by Dr. Strange what he’ll do if his plan succeeds and he says he’ll, “finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest wills.”
OK, so yes, Captain Genocide there is a monster and needs to be stopped, but he’s being portrayed in a way that is meant to manipulate the audience into feeling some sympathy for him.
And then, after he accomplishes his goal, he does what he says he’d do. He moves to a farm on some other planet and destroys (or at least thinks he does–there’s some real debate about whether the infinity stones could actually destroy themselves) the stones and retires to wear sleeveless t-shirts and eat really weird looking fruit.
I was never on board, because the dude fucked with Captain America and Thor, and well, you just don’t get to do that and get away with it. But I’m giving Zion a pass on this.
Marvel’s ability to make Thanos more than a one-dimensional, moustache twirling villain, was an essential part of what made Endgame so satisfying, and such an unbelievable payoff of the 21 movies that led up to it. If he’s not just a threat, but somebody who you actually believe could get away with it, then the scene Zion referenced would not have been so amazing.
In the theater, watching Captain America stagger to his feet, standing alone against Thanos’ army of creepy space dogs, sighing, then tightening the strap on his broken, unbreakable shield, knowing he’s going to die and the bad guys are going to win, you knew it wasn’t going to end that way. But if felt like it could. That was the point.
Then, the greatest single scene I’ve ever seen in a movie theater happens. And for the rest of my life when I hear this:
I’ll be right back in that theater watching that scene again. I’ll hear Falcon’s voice through Cap’s crackly headset (how do those things work, anyway?), “On your left.” The portals start opening and everybody’s coming back. And Cap finally gets to say the thing Joss Whedon wouldn’t quite let him say at the end of Age of Ultron. It’s an incredible sequence, and it doesn’t work if Marcus, McFeely and the Russos didn’t do such a great job with Thanos.
So as for Zion rooting for the bad guy?
I’ll allow it.